Talk:Definiteness
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[edit] Definiteness in Basque
It is debatable whether the Basque article -a really marks definiteness. I favour the position that it does not. Instead, -a is the default determiner, which is required to occupy the obligatory determiner position in most Basque noun phrases whenever no other determiner (or quantifier) occupies that position. This analysis accounts more economically for the fact now generally accepted in Basque linguistics that the article has a whole range of uses that are not semantically definite; it is also more coherent with the syntactic facts concerning obligatory determination in Basque noun phrases. Given that this article is about definiteness, that is somewhat unfortunate. I would therefore suggest choosing another language for this example in which the definiteness-marking value of the suffix is uncontroversial. How about a North Germanic language, for example? --A R King 16:51, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
